My 15 minutes of (semi) fame

Spending a few days as a movie extra is a fun diversion and a source of a little income during a job search. But I don’t see myself pulling up stakes and moving my family to Hollywood to launch a new career on the big or small screen.

Besides, if I did establish a foothold in Tinseltown, I’d probably be typecast as an overweight, middle-aged, bald guy and not have an opportunity for meatier roles.

I worked on a TV movie called “My Fake Fiance,” about a couple who stages a fake wedding in order to collect the gifts. Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence are the stars. I didn’t have to audition, only to e-mail my interest (and a photo) in response to a posting on Craig’s List. The movie debuts Sunday, April 19, at 8 p.m. on ABC Family Channel.

I spent three days on the set, the first in an outdoor restaurant/park scene in Buckhead, the last two in a wedding scene at Peachtree Christian Church in Atlanta. The movie was shot last fall in a number of locations around Atlanta.

My wife encouraged my acting debut and even endured my jokes about hiring an agent and joining the Screen Actors Guild. My teenage sons were, I think, mildly embarrassed by the idea. Of course, teenagers are routinely embarrassed by their parents, so this was no surprise.

When extras are confirmed to work a particular day, they are given a call time and some directives on wardrobe. Those include, depending on the scene, the types of clothes and recommended colors. Also, they include colors you should not wear (in our case, white, red or black). And the emphasis is on NO LOGOS. When I was sitting at the table in the restaurant scene, one of the assistant directors even turned my inexpensive watch so the logo wouldn’t be visible.

Extras are supposed to bring several clothing options, and when the wardrobe person checks you over, she or he tells you what works and whether you need to change. Sometimes nothing you have is OK, and you have to get some clothes from wardrobe. This happened to a lot more people in the church wedding scenes, but I passed muster.

My call time for the first day was noon, much more palatable than the next two days for the wedding scenes (6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m., respectively). We assembled in the Lenox Square parking lot and were taken by van to a nearby business park, where a fake restaurant had been set up in front of a small park.

I quickly discovered that much of an extra’s time is spent waiting – for a scene to be set up, for lighting to be moved, for just about everything. They tell you to bring a book, for good reason.

For this movie, extras were paid $100 a day, and workdays last 12 hours on average. Breaking that down to an hourly rate left me depressed, so I chose to look at it in terms of being paid for the amount of time I was actually in front of the camera. I estimated that the first day, I was in a scene for about three minutes; at $100 for three minutes, that works out to $2,000 per hour. Much better, and I’m not even a SAG member.

I was seated at a small restaurant table with three other extras (in real life, an Agnes Scott law professor, an AirTran flight attendant and an aspiring actor). In the scene, we pretended to look at menus and make recommendations to one another as the stars talked at the bar.

Along with all the restaurant patrons and workers, extras in this scene included people in the park – joggers, cyclists, children playing soccer. We were all background and were set in motion when the assistant director called “background!”

After about five or six takes, we were done, and they moved some tables, cameras and lights around for the next scene. Our table was gone, so we had to watch and wait. There were snacks such as animal crackers on hand for the extras, but we weren’t supposed to approach the table with the better food (the sign said CREW ONLY: NO EXTRAS). For all I know, the table was surrounded by one of those invisible electric fences that keep dogs in a yard; if we got too close, we might get zapped.

After a few hours, we were reseated, only to be ousted again as the camera filled the spot where our table had been. It turned out we were “wrapped” (done for the day), after I had worked only six hours.

The next morning, I got up before 5 a.m to make my 6:30 a.m. call time at Peachtree Christian Church. I had to wear wedding attire for these scenes, and after waiting in a long line for wardrobe, I was told to change into my second option for a shirt. Fortunately, the rest of the clothes I brought were OK.

There were about 200 extras for the wedding scene (many more than the previous day), so preparation took a lot of time. We all went to the makeup artist, who spent a few minutes taking the shine off my forehead and face.

The last day, along with makeup, I actually had to pay a brief visit to the hairstylist. “You need a little control,” he said as he brushed the few remaining strands I have. Tell me about it, pal. He obviously knew about my job search.

The two days at the church were mostly spent shooting the wedding scenes from several different camera angles. I was in the next-to-last row the first day, but had an aisle seat as the actors came down the aisle for the processional.

Extras were told not to bring cameras on the set, although I saw a few people sneaking pictures in between takes. I’m also told extras aren’t supposed to speak to the actors; the actors certainly didn’t speak to us.

For the second day of shooting at the church, we had to wear the same clothes (my wife washed my shirt) and take the same seats. But they ended up moving everyone in our row to the same row on the other side of the church as the scene was shot from the back. I’m eager to see the movie to find out if I’m visible in two places.

Shooting the wedding scenes went on until 8 p.m. the first day. Someone talked about how we get time-and-a-half for anything after 12 hours. I got excited until I realized that was still short of $13 an hour for that day. Fortunately I was able to nod off in the pew a few times in between takes. Nothing like getting paid for sleeping.

The end of the wedding called for all the extras to stand up and cheer. By 8 p.m. I would have stood on my head in order to be “wrapped” for the day.

At 7 a.m. the next morning, the guy in charge of extras greeted us this way: “Hey, background…I read somewhere that if you’re operating on four hours’ sleep or less that it’s equivalent to a .2 blood-alcohol level. I know we’re all a little drunk this morning, but it’s gonna be a good day.” (I actually got about seven hours’ sleep, so I didn’t qualify.)

I ended up seeing the same wedding about eight times. The second day at the church ended for me at 3 p.m., before I even had a chance to get sleepy.

In our copious down time, I learned that some extras do this kind of work extensively. There are a lot of movies, TV shows, videos and commercials shot in Atlanta, so I imagine that one could stay reasonably busy. Of course, some people see it as a chance to get discovered. I don’t count myself in that group.

The movie “Get Low,” starring Robert Duvall, has been shooting recently in locations around Georgia and using a lot of extras. My wife made her own extra debut by spending a day on that set. Other local movie opportunities for extras of late included “Zombieland” and “The Preacher’s Kid.”

I learned a little about moviemaking in my brief visit to the land of extradom. I was amazed at how many people work on the set. There’s even someone to bring in slippers for the star to wear between takes so she can take off her high heels.

I found out about a lighting trick that I guess is used in locales with high ceilings, such as the beautiful interior of Peachtree Christian Church. Lights are put inside these huge fabric cubes that are floated up by helium balloons and controlled by pulleys. They can be moved around with relative ease, although I was nervous about the church’s real lights when I was watching this process.

In the middle of my 13-hour day, I was certain this would be my one and only extra experience. But a few days later, I was calling the casting office and telling them I’m available if they needed me again.

The visibility of a small-town journalist

Shortly after I moved from New Jersey to a small town in northeastern North Carolina in 1976, a native told me, “No matter how long you live here, you’ll always be a Yankee.” Grateful for that warm welcome, I resisted the urge to say, “Well, at least we’re 1-0 in Civil Wars.” With the exception of a six-month stint in Pennsylvania in 1978, I’ve been in the South ever since.

The community newspaper, which came out three times a week then and still does, was the first small-town paper in my career. I later worked for two other North Carolina papers, both weeklies. One advantage of small-town papers: Everyone knows who you are. It’s hard to blend in when you’re the one with a camera, pen and notepad.
But having a high profile can come in handy when news breaks. I got along well with the police chief in one town, and after he turned in his resignation to the mayor one day, I was one of the first people he told.

I then went to the mayor and asked him about it. “How’d you find out?” he asked. Of course, I didn’t answer.

“I’m gonna MAKE you tell me,” he continued. Of course, he couldn’t. Actually, the mayor’s wife previously ran the newspaper, so he was only halfheartedly trying to strongarm me.

The visibility of the small-town journalist can also be a detriment. I remember having someone come to the newsroom and lead me out to their truck, where they wanted me to take a picture of a deer they had killed. Or when I was sitting at home watching TV on a Sunday afternoon and someone knocked on my door and asked me to take a picture of them with a big fish they had just caught or the big watermelon they grew.

In some ways the small-town journalist’s life is similar to everyone else’s; people are friendly until you do something they don’t like (like write something unflattering).

One night I was standing outside City Hall after a City Council meeting when I saw the town’s ambulance go out. I recognized the driver and then saw her toddler son, who was probably about 3, in the front with her. When the next issue of our weekly paper came out, I wrote a column that included a few paragraphs about how rescue squad members shouldn’t put their children in potentially dangerous situations.

For a long time after that, I was thankful I didn’t have a wreck that would require ambulance transport. I could envision having the plug pulled on me, no matter my condition.

Journalism roots run deep

I really had no choice but to go into newspapers. I grew up in Linwood, N.J., next door to the editor of the local weekly paper. The neighbor on the other side owned and operated a service station, so clearly I picked the less lucrative career. Good thing I didn’t grow up next to an ax murderer, I guess.

Perhaps it was through some form of osmosis, but by the time I was in elementary school, I knew I wanted to make newspapers my career. At age 10, I started a neighborhood paper with one of my friends. Gary and I one-finger-typed it on portable typewriters (you know, those things that are all in museums now), using a carbon, and went door-to-door in the neighborhood, selling them for a nickel. I actually did this for a few summers; we were responsible for our own amusement a lot more in the pre-Playstation days.

Our paper contained “news” you wouldn’t find in any other publication (with good reason, I suppose). When my mother had a tooth pulled, it was front-page news in the Crestlea Park Press. When Gary’s dog, Taffy, had an operation, we reported it without the indelicate details. We lifted riddles from a book (c’mon, who would sue a child for copyright infringement?) and included several. Here’s one I remember:

Q. Who is bigger, Mr. Bigger or Mr. Bigger’s baby?

A. The baby is a little Bigger.

People actually paid for this stuff! And a nickel was big money in the mid-’60s.

We included Little League standings, and my team was in capital letters, the same way big-city papers handled standings for their hometown baseball teams.

One time in July 1965, we actually had breaking news in the paper. Gary and I were busily churning out an issue when we heard that Adlai Stevenson had died. Along with the neighborhood news in The Crestlea Park Press was this: “Flash! Adlai Stevenson just died. They will perform an autopsy.”

Context wasn’t important to us at that age; besides, we probably didn’t even know who he was. We heard on TV that he had died, so we figured he must have been important.

I can’t remember if the breaking news helped our sales that week. Our customers were loyal, but they DID have other sources for news.

On the outside, looking … somewhere